gender-confused nouns with adjectives
There are some words in Spanish that are somewhat "gender-confused" and I was wondering if you would use a masculine or feminine adjective with each of the following:
el agua (las aguas) el fantasma el idioma el arte (las artes)
also, if there are any other words like these you can think of, please feel free to add them to the discussion and say whether they require a masculine or feminine adjective. Thank you!
3 Answers
The words agua and arte are feminine, but the masculine article is use to facilitate
pronunciation. The adjective will agree with the noun. la/las agua/s fría/s,
las bellas artes
Notice that in the plural, the feminine article is used because there is not
a word ending in "a" just before a word beginning in "a." Therefore, no pronunciation
problems.
As for the other two, many words which end in "...ma" are masculine and will
require masculine articles and adjectives. If you aren't sure of the gender, just check
your dictionary.
that's what i thought - just checking
thank you so much for your help!!!
Also, nouns of Greek origin, ending in -ma, -ta, and -pa are generally masculine:
el clima
el programa
el tema
el cometa
el planeta
el mapa
